


Alone

by TouchingOldMagic



Series: Ghostbusters 30 Day Challenge [11]
Category: Ghostbusters - All Media Types
Genre: Dark fic, Gen, Pre-Canon, War Fic, doesn't belong to any one particular gb canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:14:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24799015
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TouchingOldMagic/pseuds/TouchingOldMagic
Summary: Day 11 of the Ghostbusters 30 Day ChallengePrompt: Dark MomentA pre-canon story of Winston stationed in Vietnam.
Series: Ghostbusters 30 Day Challenge [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1779643
Comments: 4
Kudos: 5





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> Not entirely happy with this one, dark writing isn't my usual forte.

"Hey, Zed! Wanna go see a haunted temple?"

Winston Zeddemore, reclining on his bunk, paused in his writing and looked up at the eager face of one of the other men in his barracks. "You don't have anything better to do than gawk at the locals, Howie?"

Howie Burrows was a thin white boy with red-blond hair and a faint patch of freckles on his nose. Despite always introducing himself as Howard, he was immediately demoted to Howie thanks to his babyface features and now accepted it with good graces. He grinned sheepishly and gave a shrug.

"Zed wouldn't believe in something as foolish as _ghosts_." This came from Roger Turner, a tall black cook who'd been roped into Howie's off-duty adventures more than once. And apparently had again. His white teeth flashed in a quick smirk, teasing.

"Why not, Zed?" Howie asked, head cocked to the side in a curious expression. "What, never seen anything you couldn't explain before?"

Winston set the letter he'd been writing down on his lap in order to free his hands. "I don't know about that. I've seen some things, but just because I didn't have an explanation at the time doesn't mean there isn't one out there." His hand briefly touched the front pocket of his fatigues, where he kept his pocket-sized Bible. "I do believe there's more to us after we go, but to believe we just hang around a place like this to scare folks afterward? I dunno. There's a certain order to the way things are, you know?"

His words rolled right off the shoulders of the younger soldier, who insisted excitedly, "This shrine's existed, like, a thousand years or something. They say just before the sun's going down you can see this gorgeous woman walking around the grounds, all dressed in white but with a big red spot on her chest. Supposedly she killed herself there instead of going through with an arranged marriage. One of the kids in town told me."

Winston rolled his eyes. "Well I don't believe THAT. Besides, kids around here'll tell you anything if you listen to them for more than a minute."

Roger laughed at Howie's crestfallen expression. "Aw, leave Zed alone, Howie. He's not the type to have fun. C'mon, let's go."

Winston scoffed as the two men walked out. He wondered if he should be more insistent in chiding them for getting their entertainment from local cultures and beliefs, but then changed his mind and let them go without comment. "I am too fun," he muttered to himself, picking up his half-written letter.

\--

The sun was a red thumbnail about to disappear below the horizon when the emergency sirens blared across the American compound. Winston was returning from dropping off his letter, and the mail room was next to the communications building. Three men burst out the door and thundered across the barracks at a run, heading toward the jeep depot.

Winston fell into step beside the last man. Nearly all soldiers developed the instinctual reaction to run toward danger rather than away from it, and Winston was no exception. Especially if there was something he could do to help. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Charlie's bombed one of their own temples," the soldier bit off without slowing down. "Whole damn thing's gone."

Winston got a bad feeling.

\--

When he got to the scene, the sirens were still whining, louder than the sounds of men shouting instructions and the crying of onlookers. The building must have been beautiful, before. Even in the fading evening light he could tell the stonework rubble covering the scene was painted in bright shades of yellow, pink, and white, looking like crushed seashells spread across the dirt. Shreds of red and gold fabric in the debris had once been banners or flags. Not far from Winston's foot was the remains of an ornamental carving: a hand-sized face of a snarling dragon or monster, condemning him with bared teeth.

American soldiers and Vietnamese volunteers were moving through the remains of the building, working together to move the heavy stone pieces and uncover anyone who had been inside. A few had been found; a line of five or six people were laid out on the side of the road. The recovered looked more like piles of dirty laundry than people, their clothes covered in gray dust and dark, wet patches. Winston's eyes darted over them for a frantic moment, not recognizing them. None of them were moving. None of the sounds of the scene were the pained cries of the wounded, a stark sound Winston had become hauntingly familiar with. They weren't rescuing survivors, they were moving bodies.

Winston remembered his fleeting thought to discourage Howie and Roger and then his immediate dismissal of it. It wasn't his place to butt in, that had been the thought running through his mind.

Despite being in the center of a scene of noise and chaos, he felt very alone.

Pushing aside those feelings, Winston Zeddemore stepped into the rubble and started to help clear it away. The weight of the heavy stone was nothing compared to the weight of his own thoughts as the reality settled deeply across his shoulders.

**Author's Note:**

> The ghost mentioned is fictional and not based on real Vietamese legends.


End file.
